Evan X. Merz

I love books so much that I enjoy them in multiple formats. I recently purchased a Supernote, and because of that I'm enjoying reading digital books for the first time in a long time. But I also love good, old fashioned paper books.

I love the way they feel in my hands, I love the way they smell, and I especially love the way they look. A book with good illustrations is entrancing.

Which is why I have a small collection of relatively inexpensive books that are notable only because they are well-illustrated.

Today I want to share a recent discovery called My Father's Dragon. Apparently, I'm late to the party, because Netflix made it into a movie a few years ago, but I only recently discovered it.

It was written by a woman named Ruth Stiles Gannett and illustrated by her stepmother, Ruth Chrisman Gannett.

I'm not going to lie; despite it being only a few dozen pages long, I've never read it. I purchased it only because it is one of the most lavishly illustrated books I've ever seen. Nearly every open fold is illustrated.

And I'm posting about it now because it makes a great gift. You can still get good quality first editions from 1948 for under $20 on ebay.

For someone who loves books, and the art of illustration, it's $20 worth of magic.

One of the things I dislike most is black and white thinking: when a person breaks down a situation and decides that there are only two sides, the good and the bad. The right and the wrong. That's almost never a good analysis of... anything.

One of the signs of black and white thinking is name calling, yet name calling seems to be the main form of political discourse these days.

We call people names when we want to turn them into the "other". When we want people to see them as less than human. When we want to justify the way we treat them.

Name calling generally has the intended effect. It pushes people away and separates them from the group in power (the group who is inventing the names). It is drawing a line in the sand and saying that anyone who might fit that name is on the other side (the "bad" side).

What's tragic in today's politics is that people are often unaware that they are even participating in this. I see so many well educated and well intentioned people spouting these weird vocabularies that only make sense to the other people in the increasingly small in-group.

Obviously we hear this from the president the most. His word salad is so dense it's almost impenetrable. To him, his enemies are woke antifa leftist communist snowflakes. I think his leadership is a significant part of the problem.

But we see this equally from the groups in power on the left. The left continues to wonder why men aren't voting for Democrats, while continuing to invent new ways to denigrate men. Today the boogey man is the incel tech bro performative misogynist manosphere. While I generally consider myself a liberal, I think some of the talking heads on the left are nearly as difficult to understand as the president.

In both cases using this rhetoric is shameful, rude, and just plain lazy analysis.

Because most people are good people no matter which "side" they're on. Most people are not racists or misogynists or communists or terrorists. They are good people who disagree with a lot of the rhetoric even from their own side. They have complex feelings toward the government and toward the politics of today.

They love their community, and their country, and they want to do the right thing for the people who live there.

But name calling isn't just lazy analysis, it also accomplishes the opposite of what people usually want to do. When we use words like this, words that turn people into the "other", we push them away. Instead of bringing them alongside us, we are making it more difficult for them to see our side.

On social media this happens every day. People spend 5 minutes venting their rage then move on to whatever is next. They live on anger. In my head I call them "social media rage goblins", but I recognize that making up a name for them is somewhat ironic.

On traditional media I wonder how these people continue to find work.

What I would like to see from leaders and commenters is a refusal to engage with the most fringe beliefs like those spouted on the internet by anonymous people on the far left or far right. Instead of centering the people with the worst beliefs, let's talk to the rational people on the other side. We should lead by showing that we know that fringe beliefs are not the beliefs of most regular people.

Maybe this post is just an old fashioned call for civility. Maybe it's as antiquated and obsolete as the president's tax and tariff policies.

But I still want everyone to recognize the fundamental humanity in their political opponents. Generosity shown to someone you disagree with is the highest human virtue.

Well, it's September of 2025 and the gardening season is coming to an end. It's just about time to begin cleaning up from 2025, and making plans for 2026. In fact, I'm starting to come up with goals for my 2026 season, so I figured that it was a good time to revisit my goals for 2025 and see how I did.

Spoiler: I didn't succeed with all of them.

1. Have success with full sized tomatoes

In 2025 I wanted to go over the top with full sized tomatoes for the first time in my gardening career. In years past, I had a mountain of success with cherry tomatoes, which are very easy to grow. And I harvested a few full sized tomatoes from plants in a few years. But I'd never been overwhelmed with tomatoes. In 2025 I wanted to be giving away tomatoes to my neighbors.

So I listened to Farmer Fred's annual tomato show where he and Dan Shor discuss the tomato varieties that they're excited about. I picked three varieties that they discussed: Rugby, San Marzano, and Bush Early Girl. I started those from seed. Then I was gifted a fourth variety from a friend. It was Chef's Choice Black, I think.

I'm proud to report that my tomatoes were an overwhelming success this year. I had so many tomatoes that Erin made tomato soup, tomato ketchup, and tomato sauce. Even after all that, we were still giving bags of tomatoes away to neighbors.

Still, it wasn't a universal success. My tomatoes in the ground did great, but my tomatoes in containers were pretty disappointing. Maybe next year I will give a little more thought to the varieties I put in containers and how I care for them.

VERDICT: SUCCESS!

2. Have success growing cucumbers

I had the exact same goal with cucumbers. I'd grown cucumbers in the past, but they generally produced very few fruit that weren't very tasty. This year I wanted to be swimming in cucumbers.

So what did I do?

Well, I started my cucumbers from seed a little early in the season. I started more plants than I thought I needed, and ultimately I put six of them into the ground about two weeks before it was recommended because they were out-growing their containers.

Then I watered every day and built trellises from sticks I had laying around.

And let me tell you, we ate cucumbers until we were tired of them. I think I ate cucumber sandwiches for every lunch for a month. I was forcing the kids to eat cucumber sandwiches, too. It was definitely the best cucumber harvest I've ever experienced, and it was a lot of fun.

VERDICT: SUCCESS!

3. Grow eggplant for the first time

Every year I try to grow something that I've never grown before. This year I tried eggplant. I grew the heirloom variety Black Beauty from seed, and transplanted three eggplants into containers a few weeks after I put my tomatoes in.

But I made several mistakes.

First, I put two eggplant bushes into one container. It is one of my largest containers, but I see now that eggplants are such heavy feeders that they can't share space with another eggplant.

Second, I put the third eggplant in a container that was too far from my door. This led to me underwatering it, and it only producing a single fruit.

The problem with crowding my eggplants together was that the eggplants never reached full size. So I never noticed that they were coming into ripeness at a smaller size, and I let almost all of them become bitter and overripe.

Erin was a trooper and she still made eggplant parmesan from the few good looking ones that we harvested, but even those were a bit overripe.

So I failed at my first time growing eggplant, but that's how it usually goes when you grow something for the first time. In a way, I expected to fail. Failing at growing eggplants this year makes it much more likely that I will succeed at growing them next year.

VERDICT: FAIL!

4. Propagate more native plants

Last year I had a small success with native plant propagation. I collected seeds from California Buckeyes and grew them in containers. When some of my friends had a planting project in the spring where they needed trees, I was fortunate to be able to step in and give them around 10 California Buckeye saplings.

This year I wanted to repear that success, but with several different varieties of plants. I wanted to grow oak, toyon, sagebrush, and Roger's Red Grape.

I collected seeds conservatively from local parks, only taking one or two from each plant. Then I cold stratified the oak acorns over the winter and planted them in the spring. I'm pleased to report that I have around 10 oak seedlings growing in containers in my backyard right now.

I also have around 10 toyon, 5 or 6 native grapes, and around 10 containers of native irises. In fact, I'm most proud of the irises because I had to divide irises on my own for the first time.

Still, I wasn't successful with all the plants that I wanted to propagate. I wanted to propagate sagebrush by cutting, but I failed at every attempt. I'm going to ask a friendly local native plant expert about how she propagates sagebrush and give it another go.

VERDICT: SUCCESS!

5. Grow Dan Tucker pumpkins

In 2024 I thought about buying a cabin outside the city. In fact, this is something I'm still working on. I'm tired of living in the city. I want to have a big garden and grow lots of fruit trees. So I started visiting cabins on a few acres of land in 2024.

At one such cabin, I met a man named Dan Tucker. He showed me all around his beautiful property. We talked about his career as an organic farmer in Texas. We talked about his cancer diagnosis. I told him about wanting to get out of the city and away from the traffic. He showed me where salmon swim upstream on a creek nearby, and where the rare native flowers grow.

I loved his place, but I didn't have the money to give him the most competitive offer. It's no surprise that he sold to someone else.

Still, before I left that day he gave me some seeds. They were pumpkin seeds that he bred by crossing Mother Hubbard and Speckled Hound varieties, and I'm going to call the result Dan Tucker Pumpkins in his honor.

So how did I do growing them? Well, I tried to start them in the ground twice and failed both times. By that point it was quite late to start more pumpkins, but I couldn't just give up on them. So I started more in a cup, and just when they were ready to go in the ground I had to fly across the country. I asked a neighbor to water them but I still lost 2 out of 3.

Still, there is one growing in my front yard, and it has a few female flowers that I'm hoping were pollinated successfully. I still won't know for a few more weeks if I've had success with this one or not, but I'm hoping that I will get at least one funky looking pumpkin from all this effort.

VERDICT: TBD!

Smart phones seemed like a great idea in 2007. Wouldn't it be cool to have a device in your pocket that did everything? A palm sized device that connected you to the entire world?

And obviously, the world agreed to some degree. Cell phones are ubiquitous. They are signifiers of identity. They are connections to culture, family, and work. They are maps, emergency calls, music players, planners, secretaries, and tools for intense discussions about anything you care about.

But in 2024, the idea of the smart phone doesn't seem so smart to me.

I remember in the mid 2010s when a small but vocal group of people said that cell phones were a fad. That cell phones would come and go. That they were a fashion craze like Jordan sneakers or horn rimmed glasses or skinny jeans. I work in tech, so I remember thinking that those people were crazy and out of touch. Cell phones were, very clearly to me at the time, the way of the future. So how could anyone possibly think that they were a fad?

Well, I think it's time to acknowledge that smart phones are a design failure in many respects.

One device that does everything. One point of failure.

On Monday, November 18th, 2024, I RTOed. I Returned-To-Office. I transferred to a new position within the company I work for and I transferred back to the office. On Monday it all went relatively well. The traffic wasn't too bad, and I enjoyed seeing everyone in person.

On Tuesday, November 19th, 2024, I dropped my phone while getting out of my car in the work parking lot.

I hardly need to elaborate on this fact, because everyone knows what this implies. My screen shattered and I was instantly plunged into darkness. I couldn't text anyone. I couldn't check my email. I had to drive to places on memory. Worst of all, I lost access to my calendar.

Could I make it to an event on Sunday? I literally had no idea until I could get to a computer to pull up my Google Calendar.

When you run your life from one device, you have one point of failure. If that one thing breaks, then you lose everything. I lost my podcasts, the entertainment for my commute. I lost my music for my morning runs. I lost my calendar. I lost my group text threads. I lost social media, because my two factor auth was tied to my phone.

I have insurance on my phone, but I thought it was wasteful to replace the phone. I decided to wait for the shop to get the single part that I needed to replace - the screen. So I lost all this for around a week, and I still don't have a personal phone as I write this.

I wish I had a camera separate from my phone. I wish I had a music player separate from my phone. I wish I had a paper planner. Why was I keeping everything on one device?

Always connected and always available.

As I get older, I find that the best and worst aspects of something are often the same thing. This is definitely true in the case of cell phones.

Cell phones have a data connection that is always available. At any time you can access Wikipedia and Google and Facebook and your family. At any abritrary time you can access everything that is out there in the wide world.

But the connection goes both ways. The world can also access you at any time.

I know I'm not alone when I say that I don't want to be available all the time.

I don't want my work to be able to contact me when I'm eating dinner. I don't want to get notifications about whatever insane thing Trump did when I'm out for a run. I don't want my phone to vibrate when I'm taking a picture.

Jack of all trades. Master of none.

And this gets to the heart of the issue.

Cell phones do everything poorly. The experience sucks.

Do I really need layers of privacy on my music player? Do I really want social sharing built into my camera? Do you think that being able to take Zoom calls from the park is a good thing?

There are just so many spurious layers on all experiences on the cell phone.

For instance, to take a picture on my phone I need to wake the phone up by pressing a button, then swipe up to bring up the login, then enter my pin, then pull up the camera app, then dismiss the notification about my storage being full. Then I can finally take a picture.

You don't even need to turn on an analog camera. Just point and click. Even a digital camera is just pressing the button once to wake it up, then pressing it again to take a picture.

And don't get me started on music players that need to be connected to the internet. Just... why?

It's good to change. It's good to learn from your mistakes.

Our society hates moving backward. We hate changing our minds or trying another path.

But why?

I think it's good to grow and learn. I think it's good to admit when you make a mistake AND LEARN FROM THAT MISTAKE. I think it's good to look at your choices critically and ask yourself whether you could do something different or better.

So I am re-evaluating the whole concept of a cell phone. I miss my old, dumb, mp3 player. I miss my paper calendar / organizer. I miss my digital camera.

For now, I will wait for them to replace the screen on my phone.

But I am starting to wonder if the people who called cell phones a fad were right.

In California, we are constantly struggling with space limitations. If you're an urban gardener like me, then you might be working with as little as a tenth of an acre. This can make composting somewhat difficult. It's hard to find space for multiple compost piles. Fortunately, there is a much easier way to improve your soil that requires no dedicated space in your yard.

What is composting in place?

Composting in place means composting in the place where you intend to grow plants. It means composting directly in the soil, rather than composting in a bin then applying the compost to the soil.

Composting in place has the advantages of requiring no extra space, and requiring very little time or effort. The drawback is that you have to dig up the spot where you want to compost, so you can't have anything growing there at the time. For that reason, composting in place is generally a fall or winter activity.

Composting in place is a great way to improve your soil without having to set up a compost bin, or learn how to turn it, or learn about greens and browns.

How to compost in place

Composting in place is exceptionally easy, but it takes around a month or more for the process to complete, so it's really only something to do in fall or winter.

1. Gather kitchen scraps. My partner and I keep a container near the sink and drop all our waste plant material into it. Most of the time that material goes into our regular compost bin, but in the fall and winter I try to bury as much of it as I can.

2. Identify a place in your yard where you want to improve the soil for planting in the spring. In my yard I have a long narrow strap of soil between my driveway and my neighbor's fence. I use it for planting flowers mostly.

3. Dig a hole around 12 inches deep.

4. Dump your kitchen scraps in the hole.

5. Cover the kitchen scraps with the removed soil and mulch.

6. Wait around a month.

There are just a few things to be careful of. First, don't bury animal products this way unless you understand the risks of attracting animals. Second, this will only work in non-frozen soil. So it works great in the fall and winter for most of California, but it's not great in places where the soil freezes. Finally, be careful about doing this in the late winter or spring, as you need to give the soil food web enough time to turn the food scraps into compost.

So get out there and start improving your soil while the weather is good! This is a great garden activity that you can repeat every day in the slow seasons.